“He wants to find a vaccine for her so that she’ll feel safe leaving the compound,” I said, feeling confident in my assessment of the situation.
“That makes sense. I hope Trevor explains that to Emily because she’s quite pissed.”
“She’s always upset. That child is full of drama. I hate that Kayla is stuck with her. I hope some of Kayla’s badassery rubs off on the girl.”
“I’ll have to remember to tell Kayla you called her a badass.”
“She’ll think you’re lying. She hates me, and, for whatever reason, thinks I hate her. I probably should have spent more time with her while you were gone, but I spent most of my days crying over Maddie. I didn’t think she’d want to see that.”
“She knows. She’s just a scared kid. Despite how old she is. She feels like you’re taking her parent away from her. And it isn’t you that she’s mad at. It’s just you that she’s taking it out on at the moment. She’s mad at me, and what she doesn’t realize is even if you weren’t here, I’d be leaving her in a few days’ time. If I weren’t going with you, I’d be going with the others to find a vaccine, and she’d be stuck here. What it boils down to is that she’s scared I won’t come back.”
“I know. I just wish Kayla wouldn’t take it out on me. It makes me want to tell you to stay, but I really want you with me.” I didn’t look at him but down at the coffee cup in my hand, as I said the words.
“Even if you told me to stay, I’d still go with you,” he said, reaching out and taking my hand.
I smiled shyly at him and asked, “When are they leaving?”
“In about three days. When do you want to go?”
“As soon as we can.”
“Let’s get planning then,” he said, kissing me on the top of the head and going to the bedroom to change clothes.
Over the next few days, we mapped out our route, packed our bags, and loaded a small S.U.V. with other supplies, not a lot, as we didn’t know if we’d be able to travel long or far in the vehicle. Jason said that there were long stretches of open road on their journey to the first lab, but there was no guarantee the way south would be the same.
The island wasn’t going to be too hard to navigate, as so many of those who used to live on it walked, rode bicycles, or took public transportation. We could clear the bodies off the roads easy enough, but it would slow our travels, which was one of the reasons I had argued that we should go on foot. Jason worried about my leg more than he should, and wouldn’t let me dissuade him from his plan.
Tera’s group was planning to take a vehicle as well based on the same fact that she’d encountered very little traffic on the journey to the island, though she did admit to staying away from most of the main highways and interstates. Trevor said the same about their travels west. When I asked why they were on foot, he said it was because the sounds of the vehicles got the attention of the zombies. I pointed that out to Jason as a good reason for us not to use one, but he reminded me that there was little chance of there still being zombie hordes milling about out there.
I wasn’t confident enough in that assumption to want to take the chance, but in peering out across the island from the top of Shore Haven, I couldn’t argue. The island was a ghost town. Or so we all thought.
We left for Ashlyn a day before Tera’s group was going to leave for Blue Springs, Missouri. My entire body shook as we began our exit from the underground parking garage that serviced our side of the compound. I shook mostly from fear of leaving the safety of Shore Haven, but also in fear of what I would find when I got home. Jason squeezed my hand once in reassurance before putting both of them back on the wheel.
We said nothing, only watched our surroundings, as we slowly navigated the island streets. The sight of the department store in which my sister died took me by surprise, and I gasped and burst into tears, remembering that she was still in there, as we hadn’t had a chance to come back for her body. Jason stopped the vehicle in the middle of the road and turned to me with a worried expression.
“Maddie,” I said, pointing toward the store. Shock replaced the worry. He’d forgotten about her.
“Samantha, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think when I took this route. I can turn around…go a different direction.”
“No. I want to see if Maddie is still there. I can’t believe I left her to rot like that. I’ve just been grieving for her, not thinking about where her body was.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asked, looking at the store in apprehension.
“Yes. I need to know. I need to…” I couldn’t yet voice what I felt I needed to do.
“Okay,” he said, putting the vehicle in drive and pulling up in front of the store the best he could.
I sucked in a deep breath and put my hand on the door handle, bracing myself. Jason didn’t say anything, only exited the vehicle and came around to open my door for me. I gave him a grateful smile before walking hesitantly over and around decaying bodies toward the busted front windows of the department store.
Maddie’s body was where I left it. The only reason I had known the body before me was hers was that I remember the clothes she’d had on that day. I knelt down beside her and tentatively reached out a hand to move matted hair off her face. When I did, I ended up removing a chunk of hair and some skin in the process. I looked at the mass of flesh and hair hanging from my fingers for a long second, not believing what I saw. Finally, I gasped in revulsion, shook my hand, flinging the mass unconsciously toward the nearest wall, where it hit with a meaty smack. I gagged, leaped to my feet, jerked aside my facial coverings, and vomited into a corner.
Jason did not come to my side, even after my vomiting turned into dry heaves, and those became sobs. I didn’t realize that he hadn’t until I had sunk onto my butt from exhaustion near my pile of vomit. I looked his way to see that he had found a large, fluffy, purple comforter, and had wrapped my sister’s body up in it.
“I want to take her home,” I said, watching him seal her into the comforter with purple Duct Tape.
He stopped what he was doing, sat down the tape, and looked at me for a long moment before saying in a calm, patient voice, “We can’t take her with us.”
“But she deserves to be buried at home, where she grew up,” I said, unashamed of the childish whine in my voice.
“That may be so, and I wish we could do that for her, but we can’t.”
“Why not?” I was seconds away from having a tantrum—I could feel it coming on, and didn’t know how to stop it. I was a grown woman. I couldn’t allow myself to behave that way, not in front of a man I was falling for, not if I wanted him to continue to fall for me.
He took a deep breath and said, “Because her body is already decaying. You don’t register the smell of her right now because equally, rotting bodies surround us, but once we put her in the car with us, you will. By the time we get her to Ashlyn, there will be nothing left of her but bones in this heat.”
“But we can’t just leave her here. I feel sorry for all of them, but I knew her. She’s family. I can’t leave her out here to rot.”
“I know. We’ll bury your sister. There’s a small park just up the road. We’ll put her there. Is that all right?”
No, it wasn’t, but I couldn’t say that. Reluctantly, I rose and said, “It’ll have to be, won’t it. You’re right. We can’t take Maddie with us.”
Feeling guilty for my behavior, I went to him to help lift her onto the white tarp he’d laid out next to her. The purple comforter had been for the person Maddie had once been. The tarp was for practicality’s sake.
She wasn’t heavy, despite being dead weight, and we got her into the back of the S.U.V. without much difficulty aside from the four zombies that had snuck up on us while we were moving her. They weren’t the only ones in the vicinity of the store and us, but they were the only ones that got in our way. The others appeared to be coming our way, but they were moving so slowly that we didn’t feel panicked or rushed by them. We also didn�
�t find their presence curious, not at first at least.
Once her body was secure in the back, Jason drove us the two blocks to the small park. I hated burying her amongst the swing sets and jungle gym, but it was the closest patch of ground he could think of to bury her quickly so that we could get on the road. Our little detour had already set us back about an hour or so. We had figured setbacks into the schedule, so we weren’t off course by much, but we had hoped to be off the island by that point.
I didn’t have the strength or stamina to be of much help to Jason, but I did assist in the shoveling. We didn’t make the hole as deep as we would have liked, but we couldn’t leave it shallow either for fear of some animal digging her out of it.
While we dug, we were conscious of the number of zombies milling about and making their way to us. At first, there weren’t that many. We easily took down the ones that closed in on us, but after a while, their numbers seemed to grow.
We’d barely gotten Maddie in the ground and covered before the zombies surrounded us. We fought our way back to the S.U.V., but once in the vehicle, we were stuck, and more were coming. Jason tried driving through them, but there were so many…more than we ever thought were still alive on the island.
Finally, he had to radio for help. Tera, Russ, and Trevor were packing for their trip the following day, so they had their arsenal nearby and got to us quickly.
Most of the fight was a blur to me. Jason and I shot the creatures from cracks in the vehicle’s windows, with the others on the outside of the horde, thinning them from their location until they weren’t right upon us, then we were able to roll down our windows and take proper aim.
Eventually, we could drive through them and head back toward Shore Haven since a horde of zombies blocked us from going in the opposite direction. I didn’t argue or protest. The presence of so many zombies shook me to my core. All I wanted was to find safety somewhere.
We pulled into the underground garage at about the same time the others did. All of us looked shook up and shocked by what we’d encountered. Jason rushed to me the second he was out of the jeep and hugged me.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, holding me tight. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right,” I said. “Well, I can’t stop the shaking, but I’m not hurt.”
“Where the hell did they all come from?” Russ asked, coming to stand next to us with Tera and Trevor on his heels.
“I have no idea. You’ve been monitoring the town, just as I have,” Jason said.
Shore Haven had cameras everywhere—many of them focused on the outside of the building, but they only showed us the road and buildings surrounding the compound. The ones on the roof could show us parts farther off, but they couldn’t show us the entire island. Having said that, one could see most of the island from the top of Shore Haven with a good pair of binoculars.
“I haven’t seen anything move on the island in a while. Hell, we just walked across the entire thing the other day with no problems,” Jason said, loosening his hold on me.
“Maybe a new batch flooded in, and we didn’t see it,” Trevor suggested.
“Doubtful. We’ve tried to have a constant watch on the bridge, as it is the only way on and off the island. Shore Haven has too many cameras to count, so if a large horde passed anywhere near the compound, Jasper would have seen it,” Tera said.
“So, they’ve been in hiding or dormant all this time?” Trevor asked, looking puzzlingly toward the closed entrance to the garage where the sound of the horde moving around outside was growing louder. “They can’t break that down, can they?” he asked.
“They shouldn’t be able to, but just in case, let’s go inside and pull up the scene on the monitors,” Jason said, leading me inside Shore Haven.
Not all of the apartments can access the security controls, but Jason’s could, so we congregated there to see what the zombies were doing. They appeared to be focusing their attention on the door that led to the parking garage for some odd reason. Their numbers were so many that they fanned out to cover a significant portion of that section of the compound, but all of them seemed to be trying to get to the door.
“That’s odd,” I said, scanning the screens to see if my assumption was correct.
“What, that they’re trying to get to the door?” Tera asked, though she knew that’s what I meant.
“Yep.”
“Have any of you seen anything like that?” Trevor asked.
“I’ve seen them focus on a particular area, yeah. A few weeks after the initial wave, Sadie, Maddie, and I came upon a police station that had a large group moving around the front doors. I think some part of them knows where they last saw a live person, and I don’t believe they leave the place until they encounter another one,” I said.
“But then how do you account for those that appear to be wandering around aimlessly or the ones that walk right by humans, like all those that passed Tera on the bridge that day?” Russ asked, pointing to a few stragglers that had just wandered onto the scene and seemed to be confused as to why they were there.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to fit that information into my theory and not being able to do so.
“Maybe it wasn’t just you guys. Maybe it was the vehicles,” Tera suggested.
“Why the vehicles? They don’t eat metal, do they?” Kayla asked.
“No, they don’t, but maybe they’re attracted to the sound. Like Jason said, we saw very few hordes on our way to and from the lab. I don’t recall running into a single zombie once we hit the bridge, so they can’t/don’t smell us, or at least the smell doesn’t appear to attract them unless they are right on us,” she said, observing the zombies.
“That’s an idea. What do you guys think we should do about them right now? Should we give them time to disperse or should we kill them?” Jason asked.
There were votes for both.
“Is there a way to lead them away,” I asked.
“Maybe, why?” Russ asked.
“Because we don’t want that many rotting zombies on our front door, or whatever door we consider this side of the building to be,” I said. “They’ll bring disease and other things—them and all of the other rotting bodies on the island. We need to kill them away from Shore Haven and have a place to immediately dispose of the bodies. At some point, we’ll need to dispose of all of the bodies on the island. If for no other reason than that the city stinks, and that smell might attract more of them to the island.”
“We can’t dig a hole that large,” Trevor said, looking at the others for confirmation.
“We could,” Jason said, “but we don’t want to have to. It’ll take time and just draw them to us, which could hinder our progress. We need a hole that already exists.”
“You’re the only one truly from the island,” Russ said to Jason. “Do you know of any place like that?”
“The hospital is one large hole. I think there was some kind of explosion there,” I said. “It’s vast. I don’t know if we could burn them well there, as I don’t know much about those sorts of things, but it’s an option.”
“It’s a good one. That hospital was massive. Is all of it gone?” Jason asked.
“From what I could tell, yeah.”
“Tera, you up for checking it out with me?” he asked the other woman. I started to get offended that he would ask her but didn’t because I absolutely didn’t want to leave the compound right then.
“Yeah. Russ, you and Trevor work on a route to lead the zombies in that direction if the hole is as big and usable as we think it is. Also, if their numbers get too large, start picking them off. We may not want them rotting on our doorstep, but we also don’t want them breaking down the door. Samantha, go to the roof and be a lookout. Let us know where you see the largest numbers coming from and watch the bridge. We don’t need this horde summoning more zombies from off the island if possible.”
I nodded, grateful for something to do that was helpful, but that kept me inside the bu
ilding.
“What should we do?” Kayla asked, pointing between her and Emily.
“Stay here. Watch the monitors. If you see anything, tell someone immediately.”
“Got it,” she said, also glad to have something productive to do indoors.
Chapter 24
~~~Samantha~~~
As it turned out, the pit that used to be the hospital was perfect for what we needed. Jason and Tera also found two other holes; one was a construction site and the other they assumed was going to be a trash dump site once finished. Those two weren’t as large as the hospital one, but their locations around the island would mean that we wouldn’t have to lure the zombies too far to their deaths, risking our own lives in the process. Also, we wouldn’t have to haul dead bodies for long stretches when we started the cleanup process.
Jason and Tera’s trek to and from the hospital was uneventful. They ran into a few zombies, but their presence didn’t draw the horde away from Shore Haven, giving credence to the idea that the sound of the vehicles attracted them more since they couldn’t smell us through our protective covering.
The following day, to test the theory, Tera, Jason, Russ, and Trevor snuck out of Shore Haven, hot-wired a car, and parked it on the edge of the hospital, with the C.D. player blasting. During the night, the zombie horde on our side of the building had thinned some, but not substantially. Within an hour of them starting the car, though, the zombies were all but gone.
Two hours after they’d started the car, we heard gunshots. Kayla, Emily, and I were on the roof trying to watch the scene from our location, but another building hid the site from us.
Shore Haven Page 21
